Frontline’s “Netanyahu at War,” which had its premier showing on PBS Tuesday night, depicts the Israeli politician as a feisty character who does not shy away from confrontation, and, in fact, relishes it. In that context, his battle with President Obama over the Iran nuclear deal is seen as just one in a long series of fights Netanyahu has been engaged in since the beginning of his political career. He may not be your favorite political figure, the film argues, but you must admire him for his oodles of testosterone, if for nothing else. And like the Israeli leader or not, it’s impossible not to admire his tenacity.

In that context, the film stops short of actually blaming the Rabin assassination on the atmosphere that Netanyahu generated during the election campaign. For one thing, it relies heavily on left-wing speakers for the narrative, so that, for instance, Rabin’s callused alienation of the right does not exist in the film, nor is his expressed view that he was only the prime minister of most of the people.

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“Night after night, the crowds massed across the street from Prime Minister Rabin’s apartment in Tel Aviv,” says the film narrator, and Dennis Ross, Middle East envoy, 1993-2001, relates: “I’m there one Shabbat evening. We’re talking. And it’s just the two of us. And there’s a demonstration outside. And I said to [Netanyahu] at the time, I said, ‘Don’t you worry about some of this?’ And he goes, ‘No.’ I mean, he was— it’s not that he was— you know, it’s not that he was completely dismissive of it, but he took it as kind of a given. He knew, in a sense, what was coming and simply accepted it.”

“Rabin responded with his own rally, more than 100,000 supporters singing of peace,” goes the narration. “Then as Rabin was leaving— that’s him coming down the ramp— the man in the blue T-shirt approached— three shots from behind.” The Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, the architect of the Middle East peace process, has been assassinated.”

Yes, if you are a student of history you know Rabin was not the architect, he was, possibly, the contractor. But historic accuracy is not what this PBS film is about.

“The assassin was a right-wing Israeli Jew, Yigal Amir,” goes the narration. “An evening spent dreaming of peace turned into a national nightmare. Outside the hospital, the crowd began to chant ‘Bibi is a murderer.’ The sign says, ‘Bibi, Rabin’s blood is on your hands.’ Rabin’s widow blamed Netanyahu for contributing to her husband’s death—and said so on worldwide television.

The film cuts to an interviewer asking Leah Rabin, “Your husband pointed the finger at Mr. Netanyahu and said, ‘You must stop this incitement.’ To what extent do you blame Mr. Netanyahu and the Likud for what has happened?'” To which Mrs. Rabin responds: “I do blame them. The rally in Jerusalem that showed him in the uniform of a Nazi— so Mr. Bibi Netanyahu, now we can say from here to eternity that you didn’t support it and didn’t agree with it, but he was there and he didn’t stop it.”

Never mind that it has been proven by an investigating committee that those posters of Rabin the SS Man were the product of a Shabak agent named Avishai Raviv. It doesn’t matter, apparently. In the PBS version, just like in Leah Rabin’s, it’s Netanyahu’s fault.

Netanyahu’s close adviser Eyal Arad disagrees with Mrs. Rabin’s version, obviously, saying, “The attempt to pin on him the murder of the prime minister is a cheap political propaganda trick that was taken by his political opponents, mostly from the left, in order to delegitimatize Netanyahu as the political public and to delegitimatize the positions of Likud in the Israeli open political debate.”

But then, just when you’ve started to believe the murder really was Bibi’s fault, meant to usher him into the PM’s seat, the PM is vindicated from a truly unexpected direction: Martin Indyk, US Ambassador to Israel from 1995 to ’97, who is not a big fan of Netanyahu, which is why his story is credible:

“Netanyahu sat next to me. And I remember Netanyahu saying to me, ‘Look,’ you know, ‘Look at this. He’s a hero now. But if he had not been assassinated, I would have beaten him in the elections, and then he would have gone into history as a failed politician.'”

That moment, when Netanyahu assesses his late opponent dispassionately, strictly in terms of cost and effect, is pure Bibi. And not only does it absolve him of even a hint of blame for the murder, it shows that the side that benefited from the murder was and continues to be Israel’s left. Without Yigal Amir, Rabin, who entered the Oslo deal not as a peacenik, which he never was, but as a security expert, would have killed the deal and dismantled the PA. It isn’t certain that Netanyahu could have beaten him, Rabin was a very popular and trusted figure, but the elements of the left which now dominate the Labor party would have been relegated to the dark regions where the Meretz folks roam.

6 COMMENTS

like above so below
after it came out that BHO spied at the PM he has a story to tell? I prosume Netanyahu is too smart to talk such B…….t Again Husssein try to mix in Istael s politics this time via an A,,,,,,,,,le

I haven't seen such a shallow film for a long time – and I'm sorry I wasted those 2 hours of my life.
There are better ways to demonize Obama (if that was the goal) than to compare him to PM Netanyahu, me thinks.

People who think the documentary was slanted to favor the left should consider that it faild to incude the following:

The Obama administration has consistently backed Israel at the UN and helped prevent a declaration of a Palestinian State by the UN, an effort that led Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to declare that Obama deserved a “badge of honor;” Israeli strategic experts agree that strategic cooperation between the US and Israel has never been better; the US has supplied funding for the “Iron Dome” missile defense system that has saved many Israeli lives; Obama has supported Israel with regard to the Goldstone report and the Gaza flotilla events; Obama helped save six Israelis who were trapped in the Israeli embassy in Cairo, in response to a frantic, middle-of-the night call from Netanyahu. And, as Netanyahu mentioned in his talk to Congress, Obama has done many other things for Israel that the public is not aware of. In his meeting with Obama December 10, 2015, Israeli president Rivlin thanked Obama for the “extensive and unprecedented security assistance the United States has given Israel over the past seven years.”

Obama has also been very friendly to Jews in the US. His former Chief of Staff Jack Lew is an Orthodox Jew who is now Treasury Secretary and his first Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is a Jew; he appointed a Jew, Elana Kagan, to the Supreme Court and a Jew, Janet Yellen, to head the Federal Reserve; many of his key advisors are Jewish; He is the first president to have Passover Seders in the White House.

Obama has done more than any other president to get a coalition to impose the strongest sanctions ever on Iran, and this has brought Iran to the negotiating table and caused them to already reduce their nuclear capability. As Obama and Kerry often state, successful diplomacy is not guaranteed but it must be pursued because attacking Iran would have many potentially negative consequences and is not certain of success.

Israel needs a comprehensive, sustainable 2-state resolution of her conflict with the Palestinians in order to avert renewed violence and increased diplomatic isolation and criticism, respond effectively to her economic, environmental, and other domestic problems, and remain both a Jewish and democratic state. This is not only my view, but, as indicated in the Israeli Academy Award-nominated movie, "The Gatekeepers," is also the opinion of many Israeli strategic experts, including all the living retired heads of Shin Bet, Israel’s General Security Service. Of course Israel’s security has to be a major priority in any agreement, with, for example, any Palestinian state being demilitarized.

Many Israeli security and military experts believe there is no military solution to the Israel/Palestinian conflict.

During his talk in Cairo in 2009, Obama expressed strong support for Israel aurged the Muslim world to make peace with Israel.